This post will be about the best meditation books for traders. If I could start my trading career over I would start meditating from day one.
For most of my trading career, I thought I needed to study, watch videos, and pay people to teach me how to trade in order to be a profitable trader. The only consistency I had was losing money from trading and jumping from one system to the next. I watched countless videos and read probably over 50 stock books during this time. This was back in the day before YouTube and before online courses took off.
In order to watch a trading video, you had to buy it or rent it. Then they mailed it to you. There was a company that offered this, it was like Netflix but for trading. And by Netflix, I mean before Netflix was primarily a streaming company. They used to ship movies to watch that you had in your “queue.” Then when you returned that one they would send you the next one. Now with streaming being mainstream, it makes that old model look like silly. But at the time we thought it was awesome.
Anyways, the company was www.ino.com, their main product was “Marketclub” that supposedly predicted when you should buy and sell a stock. They are still around selling their prediction software. The videos I watched were mostly terrible. It would either be old balding dudes in front of a projector changing charts manually or a small audience that was obviously paid to be there and act like they cared what the dude presenting was saying. Looking back it was pretty hilarious since it was so bad.
This led me down the journey to eventually discover meditation. That has impacted my trading faster and better than any video or trading book ever did. Once I saw the power that meditation had not just for my trading but for my life overall I started reading as many books as I could about it.
Meditation is similar to trading in that there are tons of people in that niche who are obviously scam artists and sell packaged crap. The only difference is there are a lot more women in the meditation industry than there are in the trading scene.
Meditation for Traders
In this post, I go over the exact steps I take for my daily meditation sessions: https://evancarthey.com/how-to-become-a-profitable-trader-using-meditation/.
I use meditation for how it calms my thoughts and taps into my subconscious. The other eastern religion voodoo that has been injected into it is stuff I cast aside. I’m not interested in chakras
Here are the benefits you can expect to receive if you do meditate regularly:
- Better sleep
- Less negative internal talk (the internal voice that tells you how dumb you are)
- More positivity throughout your day
- The little things that used to stress you out don’t bother you anymore (road rage)
- Learn concepts quicker
- Easier to identify patterns
- Less stress
- More confidence
- More focus and drive
- Things start happening that work out in your life (probably because you are working harder and more diligently)
- Better digestion because of less stress
I know because these are the benefits I have when I meditate regularly. There are more but those are the main ones. I haven’t even touched on the main one which is what this post is about.
The main point is meditation will improve your trading performance faster than anything you have tried before. The best thing about it? It is free. You don’t have to pay a dime unless you want to purchase one of the books I recommend. Or you could check them out at the library.
If more traders meditation then I am convinced more people would make money from trading. It doesn’t matter if you are a day, swing, long-term, or buy and hold trader. Meditation will improve your performance.
Plus you will receive other benefits from it that will make your life all around better.
The books I list below are the ones that have helped me the most in my trading. If I could start over again then I would read them in the order listed for fastest impact.
The List of Best Meditation Books for Traders
The Secret of Quantum Living (Affiliate Link)
This is the book that started it all for me. My friend who was a trader and taught me the importance of meditating recommended The Secret of Quantum Living. I still have his 3 pages of directions he sent to me one day with this book being a key piece to his trading success.
The book is written by Frank Kinslow and he has a bunch of other books and audiobooks with exercises to supplement this book. Some of the exercises are good and others are not. They are not necessary if you practice what he teaches in The Secret of Quantum Living.
It is the foundation for how I quiet my mind. The first part of the book he goes into theory and how his style of meditation works. Basically, it is Aikido for the mind. You don’t push against the thoughts that come into your mind. You simply observe them until they fade away.
Did you know you can only have one thought in your head at a time? Next time you think your mind is overloaded with thoughts just realize it is really your emotions amping up the thought in your head. Yes, your thoughts can come one after another in rapid succession. But your brain can only focus on one thought at a time that your conscious mind is aware of.
If you do this for long enough then your thoughts will start to quiet down. Once that happens then you will start to notice gaps in your thoughts where there is nothing but stillness and peace. Then around your heart, you will start to feel a warm feeling of happiness or joy.
That is what he calls the “eufeeling.” From there you can focus your attention on something you wish to change and improve in your life. But the main goal, in my opinion, is to get into the gaps of stillness and peace. That is where the real work takes place. That is where you are relaxed and are not fighting your thoughts. It is such a simple yet amazing concept.
From there you can use the power of your subconscious mind to discover new trading setups and systems that work for you. This is how I have discovered all of the trade setups that I use. In fact, you can use this for any area in your life you are looking to improve. The key is to get into the gaps.
Trading in the Zone (Affiliate Link)
This is the book most traders are familiar with even though it wouldn’t make the lists of most meditation books. It was written by the late Mark Douglas and became the go-to book for trading psychology. There is a paragraph in there that confirmed what I felt I knew but needed a little more clarification:
“I haven’t seen much correlation between good trading and intelligence. Some outstanding traders are quite intelligent, but a few aren’t. Many outstanding, intelligent people are horrible traders. Average intelligence is enough. Beyond that, emotional makeup is more important.”
From that quote, I knew I was correct in my thinking about meditation and how your emotions are the most important part of trading. They trump intelligence every single time.
It doesn’t matter how smart you are, it matters how you work with your emotions. That is the difference between a profitable trader and a losing trader. That is why meditation is so important to becoming a profitable trader.
Trading in the Zone doesn’t go into meditation but it goes into the psychological aspect of trading which is very important. Mark stresses you have to trust yourself and your trades in order to be a profitable trader.
That was the key point that turned my trading around from meditating. When I started creating my own setups and trading style I found out what worked and didn’t work for me. I used to try and learn someone else’s trading style. But I can’t do that and be profitable.
The reason why is because I don’t fully understand and trust whoever it was I was trying to learn from. Also, just about everyone whose trading setups or style I tried to copy probably was a losing trader anyways but that is beside the point for what I am trying to explain.
You have to create your own trading style. Only then will you fully trust yourself and the trades you get into. You’ll know if you need to get out early or if you can stay in longer.
You are taking the guesswork out of the trades you enter because they are now the trades that you created. You are the creator. Meditation and getting in the gaps enables your mind to identify and create a trading style that works for you.
Being in the zone is just the gaps in your thoughts. It is your thoughts quieting down so you can relax in stillness and focus. That is why I recommend The Secret of Quantum Living for your meditation. If you want to get into the zone then get into your gaps. That is the secret.
Kenny Werner’s Effortless Meditation (Affiliate Link)
You can read the full post for Kenny Werner’s Effortless Meditation HERE.
What if you could operate in the stillness and peacefulness of your subconscious? Kenny Werner Effortless Mastery (affiliate link) book tells you how to do this. This is a book I finished reading for the 2nd time because it has a ton of gems and easy to incorporate ideas to improve my meditation practice.
Here is the video where I first discovered Kenny and his system for finding the space:
You might be thinking, how does a book from a jazz musician help with my trading journey? To be honest it doesn’t if you look at it from only a jazz musician angle. But it takes little effort to see how the lessons and skills he teaches can be incorporated to just about any skill you are looking to improve upon.
In fact, it can be used for your life altogether.
Kenny teaches to trust and play from your subconscious. That you should not practice or play until you are in that state which is playing from your subconscious. Then and only then should you start playing. But that isn’t the only item to remember. He also recommends you master each phase of playing before you move onto the next.
That means that a musician should master the basics before moving to harder musical pieces. You should be able to play each piece of music at a master level where you don’t even have to think about it. Your fingers automatically play the piano and the music comes from your subconscious.
He says a big issue is most people move onto the next piece of music before mastering the previous because their ego tells them they have to keep “progressing” and the only way to do that is to keep doing harder and harder musical numbers. This is where their ego and need for control takes over. When you do this you shutout your playing from your subconscious mind and this is where the issues arise from.
This is where traders get themselves into trouble as well. Instead of focusing on the basics and truly mastering the trade setups that work for them, they bounce from one system to the next (usually spending hundreds and even thousands of dollars in the process) in hopes of find the system that will work for them.
I highly recommend Kenny Werner’s book Effortless Mastery. This book was a great reminder how I need to take a minute to focus on my subconscious and seek to get into that space before I trade.
In fact, I should look to do this before I do just about anything. My biggest obstacle to my success is myself. To be honest, it is a little depressing to type this but it is the truth. In my effort to control the outcome I sabotage the results. So despite my best efforts and intentions I always come up short in trading when I take matters into my own hands.
The Kenny Werner Effortless Mastery system has reminded me to always seek to learn and live from my subconscious. It is something I am working to make a habit of.
Before I begin anything I am striving to take at least a minute to focus on the stillness and peace in order to tap into my subconscious.
Conclusion for the Best Meditation Books for Traders
I like to keep things simple. Right now these are the two best meditation books for traders and they compliment each other very well. I’m reading two other books at the moment and one of them might make the list. It has some good points so we shall see.
Whether you read these meditation books or not is up to you. But what I hope you take away from reading this post is the importance of meditation. Even if you don’t want to use it for trading then do it for your life.
You will improve your life from it. The link I posted above and is just below as well about how to become a profitable trader using meditation provides an even quicker shortcut to how you can start meditating. If you haven’t started yet then give it a read and try it for 5 minutes today.
The aim is to make meditation a habit in your life just like brushing your teeth or putting on clothes in the morning. They are automatic tasks and you want your meditation practice to be the same. Start small with it and make it too easy to not do it. Then after awhile increase it by just a minute or two. After a little more time increase it to a little more time in your meditation sessions.
Within a couple of months, you could be easily doing 30-minute sessions and from there you will start receiving amazing returns from your meditation time.
Popular Links
Here are a couple of links if you are looking at how I view the market and with my trade setups as well as products I like and use.
- How to become a profitable trader using meditation
- How to scan for winning stocks
- The Ultimate Guide for the Best Day Trading Books in 2019
- How to Improve Your Meditation with the Brain Evolution System
- Review: Stikky Stock Charts – An Excellent Trading Book That is Interactive
Robinhood Trading Broker Review
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My Robinhood Review: https://evancarthey.com/review-robinhood-trading-service-with-no-fees-part-1/
